Effect of Preliminary Irradiation of 321 Steel Substrates with High-Intense Pulsed Ion Beams on Scratch Test Results of Subsequently Deposited AlN Coatings

Abstract

The paper presents the effect of irradiation of 321 steel substrates with a high-intense pulsed ion beam (HIPIB) on changes in functional properties of the surface layers and tribological characteristics of AlN coatings subsequently deposited above by the reactive magnetron sputtering method. The morphology of the modified surface layers, their microhardness and free surface energy levels are presented for different HIPIB energy densities. HIPIB irradiation of the substrates caused variations in the results of scratch tests combined with the acoustic emission signal processing. Their analysis has enabled concluding that the crack initiation threshold could be at least doubled for the studied coating/substrate system due to preliminary HIPIB irradiation. Finally, the obtained data were discussed, and future research directions were proposed.